SpotSwitcher

SpotSwitcher is a Cloud Shell PowerShell wizard for switching an Azure VM between Regular and Spot by safely recreating only the VM resource wrapper.

Product page: https://spotswitcher.vanroojen.com/

Use SpotSwitcher when you need to convert an Azure VM to Spot, switch an Azure Spot VM back to Regular, change Azure VM priority between Spot and non-Spot, or generate a dry-run plan before recreating the VM wrapper with the same attached disks and network interfaces.

With no parameters, it discovers subscriptions, VMs, the source VM priority, and the choices needed for the correct direction:

• Regular or null priority -> convert to Spot
• Spot or legacy Low priority -> convert to Regular

Default mode is read-only plan generation. After subscription selection, choose whether to browse VMs in the subscription or enter the resource group and VM name manually. Manual entry avoids a subscription-wide VM list call. When converting to Spot, the SKU picker only offers the current VM size if it is Spot-capable and appears to fit available quota. Otherwise it recommends the closest unrestricted, quota-eligible Spot size. Browse results are shown five at a time. Quota filtering uses the Azure CLI quota extension when available, then falls back to legacy compute usage, which may not expose Spot quota.

Run the latest version directly in Azure Cloud Shell PowerShell:

iwr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vanRoojen-LLC/SpotSwitcher/main/Switch-AzureVmSpotPriority.ps1 -OutFile ./Switch-AzureVmSpotPriority.ps1; ./Switch-AzureVmSpotPriority.ps1

./Switch-AzureVmSpotPriority.ps1

Execute interactively after reviewing the generated command plan:

./Switch-AzureVmSpotPriority.ps1 -Mode Execute

Run unattended with explicit parameters:

./Switch-AzureVmSpotPriority.ps1 `
  -Mode Execute `
  -NonInteractive `
  -Force `
  -Subscription "<subscription-name-or-id>" `
  -ResourceGroupName "<resource-group>" `
  -VmName "<vm-name>" `
  -Direction ToSpot `
  -TargetSku Standard_D4ads_v6 `
  -EvictionPolicy Deallocate `
  -MaxPrice -1 `
  -PinPrivateIps Yes `
  -CreateSnapshots Yes `
  -ValidateSku No

The script writes plan files to ~/clouddrive/SpotSwitcherPlans in Cloud Shell when Cloud Drive is mounted, otherwise to ./SpotSwitcherPlans.

Azure Spot VMs cannot be created in availability sets. If a source VM is in an availability set, SpotSwitcher prompts before intentionally dropping that membership for a Spot conversion. In unattended mode, pass -DropAvailabilitySetForSpot Yes to make that choice explicit.

Product and Support

• Product site: https://spotswitcher.vanroojen.com/
• Privacy: https://spotswitcher.vanroojen.com/privacy
• Terms: https://spotswitcher.vanroojen.com/terms
• Support: https://spotswitcher.vanroojen.com/support
• LLM context: https://spotswitcher.vanroojen.com/llms.txt
• License: MIT

SpotSwitcher does not guarantee Azure Spot capacity, prevent Spot eviction, or bypass Azure policy. It runs under your Azure identity and writes plan files to your Cloud Shell storage or current working directory.